Who’s the Bully?

A Texas football team recently beat an opponent 91-0 and the mother of one of the opposing players filed a bullying report with the school system.

According to ESPN.com, “Buchanan spent an hour in the superintendent’s office this week and the school is currently investigating, as mandated by the state. The Aledo principal told Buchanan that a written report is expected in the next day or so, something required by state law. Buchanan — who is in his 21st season as head coach at Aledo and said he has never been accused of bullying — said he has the support of the Aledo administration.”

Aledo sits at No. 1 in the Texas 4A rankings. The opposing coach said he had no problem with how Aledo coach Tim Buchanan or his players handled the game. There was no taunting or trash talking, and Buchanan clearly took steps to rein in his team’s offense, also factoring in the need to get game playing time for his starters entering into a stretch of tougher opponents.According to the ESPN report, the Aledo coaching staff was concerned about running up the score.

“In fact, at the half Friday, it was 56-0 and Buchanan and his coaching staff spent the intermission trying to figure out how to tap the offensive brakes without embarrassing Western Hills or hindering his own team’s progress. Buchanan had one thought: ‘What are we going to do to not score 100?’

This constitutes bullying? Really?

Guess what? Sometimes you get your butt kicked in life. Blowouts happen. We get beaten, battered and bruised. We have to face an ugly truth: sometimes we get kicked around by people with superior talent, more drive or better resources. And sometimes dumb luck knocks us on our rear. Is it fun? No. But it’s life. And if my mom said it once, she said it 1 million times.

Life ain’t fair.

How will these precious little flowers deal with real failure and tragedy if they can’t deal with getting whipped on the football field?

They won’t.

We can easily write this off as the actions of an overbearing mommy. But the incident lifts the cover on an insidious trend in our society. This woman exemplifies a mentality quickly winding its way deep into the American psyche. If something bad happens, find somebody to blame and then demand some “authority” make it right. Instead of letting her son learn a life lesson – how to pick himself up, move on after an ugly defeat, and use the hardship to improve – she taught him to play the blame game. She taught him to try to impose fairness. And she taught him to punish the achiever.

Great lessons.

For a socialist system.

It saddens me that we continue to evolve into a society that despises achievement and glorifies mediocrity. An obsession with fairness inevitably leads to dragging down the high achievers, rather than pulling up those who struggle. Helping requires a lot of work, compassion and grace. Pulling down just requires force.

Buchanan’s only crime: he coaches a really good football team. Mommy wants to punish him for it.